only the intellectualists keen, argumentative, fearless, and full of
life. I mention this casualness and inconstancy in Mr. Russell's
utterances not to deride them, but to show the reader how impossible
it is, at this juncture, to give a comprehensive account of his
philosophy, much less a final judgment upon it.

The principles most fundamental and dominant in his thought are
perhaps the following: That the objects the mind deals with, whether
material or ideal, are what and where the mind says they are, and
independent of it; that some general principles and ideas have to be
assumed to be valid not merely for thought but for things; that
relations may subsist, arise, and disappear between things without at
all affecting these things internally; and that the nature of
everything is just what it is, and not to be confused either with its
origin or with any opinion about it. These principles, joined with an
obvious predilection for Plato and Leibnitz among philosophers, lead
to the following doctrines, among others: that the mind or soul is an
entity separate from its thoughts and pre-existent; that a material
world exists in space and time; that its substantial elements may be
infinite in number, having position and quality, but no extension, so
that each mind or soul might well be one of them; that both the
existent and the ideal worlds may be infinite, while the ideal world
contains an infinity of things not realised in the actual world; and
that this ideal world is knowable by a separate mental consideration,
a consideration which is, however, empirical in spirit, since the
ideal world of ethics, logic, and mathematics has a special and
surprising constitution, which we do not make but must attentively
discover.

The reader will perceive, perhaps, that if the function of philosophy